Summit Notebook
Exclusive outtakes from industry leaders
The secret lives of auto executives
Ed Whitacre sneaks off to breakfast at a Detroit greasy spoon. Sergio Marchionne’s attention to detail extends to the condition of his factories’ bathrooms. And Bill Ford helped save his great-grandfather’s company by hocking the blue oval.
These are just a few of the glimmers of top Detroit auto executives’ lives that you get when you sit down with Ron Gettelfinger, head of the United Auto Workers union.
Marchionne, the chief executive of Italian automaker Fiat — which pulled Chrysler out of bankruptcy this year, seems to be “extremely respectful” of his workforce, Gettelfinger told the Reuters Autos Summit in Detroit on Tuesday.
“I know he’s went out into the facilities and one of the things that he did was walk into the restroom to inspect it. Now you don’t normally see that happen,” Gettelfinger said. “But he truly believes in the power of the people, the value they add to the process.”
General Motors chairman Whitacre is also a fan of unannounced factory visits, a detail Gettelfinger may have picked up at one of their morning meetings.
“There’s a little dive up the street that we go up here and have breakfast sometimes,” Gettelfinger said.
He also recalled a call that came from then-Ford CEO Bill Ford three years ago, when the automaker was preparing a major debt offer — a move that helped it to be the only U.S. automaker to avoid bankruptcy this year.
iSkyscraper? If you were Apple, why not?
If you had paid $3.5 billion for a skyscraper named after bankrupt automaker General Motors, wouldn’t you want a tenant to come in and pay you another few million to rename the building, with the added bonus of giving it a name not associated with a failed recipient of government largesse?
Boston Properties, which bought the building last year, located at the southeast corner of Central Park in Manhattan, is not known to be shopping around the naming rights to the building, but a top real estate broker in Manhattan, known as the “Queen of the Skyscraper” has one suggestion if ever it is : Apple.
The GM Building is home to Apple’s sleek flagship store, well known to the hordes of tourists and New Yorkers alike, and the maker of the iPhone enjoys top brand name recognition and public affection that Apple is a logical choice.
“If I were Steve Jobs I would be negotiating now,” said Darcy Stacom, the CB Richard Ellis broker who handled the transaction. (She hastened to add she has no knowledge of whether Apple is or might be interested.)
What’s more, she said, the building is home to CBS News’ national daily broadcast, so a massive audience hearing, “Live from the Apple building in New York…” every day would be a major coup for the retailer.
The naming rights to such a marquee building can be cost millions (they are not typically sold outright, but built into rents.) Then again, few companies, Apple among them, can afford that luxury in this market. And even if, as Stacom says, it takes a while for New York to get used to a new name, they may be eager to forget GM.
(Reuters photos)
Actually I disagree for exactly the reasons the broker make the suggestion in the first place. Apple is not “the establishment” quite the contrary; taking over such a building would alter that perception quite drastically in the eyes of many apple fanbois and girls.
Yahoo cedes search game to Google, for now
If you’re losing the game, time to change the playing field. Yahoo is counting on exactly that.
Ari Balogh, Yahoo’s chief technology officer and product development czar, would be among the first to admit that Google reigns supreme in the search space.
“Search the way we know it, with 10 blue links, Google has clearly won that game. Saying anything other than that is just not stating the fact,” he told the Reuters Global Technology Summit.
But Balogh says that doesn’t mean Yahoo is giving up. Inviting comparisons to the automobile industry, now infamous for bankruptcy, ballooning debt and clunky design, Balogh says innovation in search is only just beginning, and it’s too early to declare a winner yet. Ford and its Model T was once the pre-eminent mass-consumer vehicle, but today the once mighty Detroit giant — the only one of the surviving Big Three that doesn’t appear to be flirting with corporate failure — has to fend off the likes of Toyota and Hyundai.
What’s important to understand though is this really is like the auto industry in 1910….At that time, in 1915 or 1920, it sure looked like it was going to be Ford.
Because of the rapid innovation that’s going on, because if you look at that search page, it is an anachronism. When has advertising ever been so ugly in the last 10, 15 years? When has the onus of sorting through a pile of stuff, that much of a pile of stuff, ever fallen on people to do themselves?
